Turning Points (17 page)

To Kadasah there was never any doubt that Kaytin was at least part S’danzo, but she doubted seriously that he was the full-blooded S’danzo man that he claimed to be when he got very drunk and/or was trying to impress her. For one thing it seemed to go against everything she had ever been told about the S’danzo that he would be bragging about his heritage much less about his mother’s Sight— which was remarkably something he apparently thought made him more attractive.

The S’danzo were supposed to be a secretive people, and Kaytin was about as subtle as a fart in a temple.

He kept complaining and going on about his mother’s visions, and how he wasn’t going to be lured into helping her even as she climbed onto Vagrant’s back and he climbed onto the back of his mule and started following her down the road.

For the most part she didn’t bother to listen; he was going to come; he always did. He bellyached and complained and moaned, and then did whatever she wanted him to do. She was sure this was due, in no small part, to the talisman of charisma she wore around her neck. She had stolen the charm from a wizard she’d once done a job for back before she started working for one of the “rich silk-sacked, so-called nobles living on the Processional,” who now kept her in steady employment.

The talisman gave her a certain power over men, making her almost irresistible to them. When you lived by the blade you were always looking for anything that gave you any edge whatsoever. It was arguably easier for a man to kill an ugly woman than it was for him to kill a beautiful one, so…

Of course she hardly ever needed the charisma talisman since she’d started working for her patron, because the people she killed now cared very little about physical beauty. She continued to wear it because it made it very easy to manipulate most normal people— men in particular.

As she rode along ignoring Kaytin’s moaning, she found herself once again trying to figure out just exactly who her employer was. She’d never actually seen the face of the man she worked for. He had approached her in shadows that first time, wearing a hood that covered his face, and she had never had any direct contact with him since. She left the pieces of skin with the tattoos or scars under a log in front of one god or another’s ruined temple along the Avenue of Temples—as proof of her kill. When she came back the next day there was money. So she had no idea who her benefactor actually was.

She had laid in hiding once to see who would show up, but the person who came was obviously just a stable boy running an errand. She supposed she could have followed him. She knew it wouldn’t be too hard for her to find out who her employer was, but she had long ago decided not to pursue it. This was a good job, and she didn’t want to risk losing it.

Besides, she thought she probably knew, since at their first meeting he had told her his story. He was one of the few who had opposed the plan to invite the Irrune into town because he believed to the bitter end that he could negotiate with the Dyareelans. Then when Molin Torchholder led the Irrune into sight of the city walls, and the Dyreelans had only a little time to settle outstanding scores, they wreaked as much havoc as they could. They suspected, correctly, that the rich aristocrats and richer merchants had betrayed them, and sought vengeance against those they could lay hands on. Unfortunately, her benefactor didn’t feel threatened because he’d ar-gued against bringing in the Irrune, so he and all that was his were easy to “lay hands on.” The day before the city fell to Arizak, the Dyareelans killed his wife and children and burned his house to the ground. Then to add insult to injury they proceeded to torture him, trying to get him to confess to his “betrayal,” and give up other names. Ironically, it was only the arrival of Kadasah’s people, the very Irrunes he had fought to keep out, that had saved his life.

He’d undergone a foxhole conversion. Since that day he had dedicated his life and his money to exterminating the extremist Dyaree-lans who hide by day in the tunnels under Sanctuary and only came out at night. Knowing her background and her skill, he had sought her out to be his instrument of their destruction. Since she already hated the horrid bastards anyway, getting paid to kill them was rather like getting paid to eat your dinner. It was something you wanted to do and would have done anyway, so getting paid was just a bonus.

What else did she really need to know? Of course it didn’t stop her from wondering.

Soon they had reached their destination. She decided on this night to use Kaytin as a lookout instead of bait, just to make him feel better. With him watching to make sure she was unseen, she dropped a bunch of broken glass onto the ground hoping that in the dim light it would look like gems. She then made a simple snare around the “gems” using a measuring rope she had stolen from a carpenter’s job site just the day before. Then she moved into the shadows with Kaytin to wait, and wait, and wait.

Some weeks that’s all she did. Wait all night and go home empty-handed. Sometimes she’d go months between kills. They didn’t always come up in the same place, and they were careful. In fact, the more of them she killed, the more cautious they became, so sometimes she’d give up hunting them until they got cocky again, or she ran out of money—whichever came first.

“They aren’t coming,” Kaytin whispered, putting his mouth right against her ear. “Let’s leave this awful place and go back to your house for the night. I will take you places you have never been before.”

She shoved him away… “Yeah, like to a healer to get a cure for some disease you’d no doubt give me. Still you’re right, nothing’s going to come this way tonight.” She got up and started picking up the pieces of glass. She was about to gather up the measuring rope when she heard something. She grabbed her axe off her waist, twisted towards the noise just in time, threw it and dropped the nearest one.

“Vagrant! Go!” she called, and heard him running away as she drew her sword from her back. There were dozens of them, and they were obviously cultists, because no one else had any reason to come after her. Well, at least not in this section of town. But… this just couldn’t be! The cult was supposed to be all but extinct. She killed a couple of them, then something grabbed her feet and she was falling. Too late she realized she had stepped into her own trap. The last thing she remembered was a foul smelling rag being pressed against her nose and mouth.

When she woke up the air was dank and filled with the smell of death and mold. She knew immediately where they had taken her— the tunnels under the Street of Red Lanterns. She was tied up and alive—which wasn’t necessarily a good thing when one had been captured by a cult that delighted in nothing quite so much as torturing a person to death. As she became more aware of herself and her surroundings she realized that she was tied to someone, and she soon realized that a familiar voice was screeching at her.

“—safe as in your mother’s womb, she says! I’m the greatest fighter of all times, she says! Killed three men with one blow from my axe, she says! Now we are going to die the death of a thousand cuts or be burned alive to death—”

“Yeah, that’s what they usually do.” Kadasah sighed. They had been tied up with their backs together. The bonds were so tight that she couldn’t even wiggle her little ringer without pain.

“I knew it, Kadasah. I knew you were going to get me killed. My mother told me. She tried to warn me, but my great love—”

“Lust,” Kadasah corrected.

“My love blinded me. Now I am going to die. We’re both going to die without ever consummating our love.”

It was more than Kadasah could take at the moment. They had been captured and bound by the Dyareelan. She had never in her life been quite so sure of her own very immediate and horrible demise, and Kaytin was still whining because she hadn’t slept with him.

“All right, dunderhead. Since you are more than probably right, and we are about to be killed, I’m going to let you in on a little secret. You don’t love me. Hell, if you saw the real me you probably wouldn’t even find me attractive. I’m wearing a talisman I stole from a wizard that makes me look beautiful, a froggin’ charm.”

“So that you can get men to do whatever you like!” he hissed accusingly.

“Well, what other reason would I have?”

“Always with you people it is with the stealing…”

“While your people are oh so virtuous.”

“Quiet,” Kaytin said quickly, and Kadasah remembered where they were and that the only people the Dyareelans hated worse than the Irrune were the S’danzo. Then he whispered turning his head. “Don’t tell me that it is only some spell. I know what is in my heart, and I admit to you before we both die that I love you and only you.” Then his voice changed, and he screamed. “You treacherous, lying, deceitful, harpy who is getting me tortured to death!”

“Me!” Kadasah spat back. “You were supposed to be keeping watch. You were supposed to tell me if you saw anything… You know,
anything
—like a couple of dozen worshipers of the Destroyer! ”

“Shush! Don’t say her name, you’ll call her here.”

“Horse shite,” Kadasah said, shaking her head wildly since it was one of the only parts of her body she could actually move. “Gods, shmods! There are no gods… I knew it! I knew you were lying even about your damn heritage! Everyone knows the S’danzo believe in gods about as much as I do.”

“I’m not listening, I’m not listening! I am S’danzo but… I… I can have gods if I want to. It couldn’t hurt. I’m going to pray to some gods, and I’m going to ask them to forgive you for your blasphemy.”

“You’ll be wasting your breath, Kaytin. There are no gods; your people know that. It’s all just froggin’ crap the priests tell people to get them to give them their money. Did you ever see a god?”

For answer he started praying in his native tongue in a nearly inaudible whisper. He knew she, like his own mother, believed what she said; he’d heard her say it before. But he had learned differently from his father, and he wasn’t going to listen to Kadasah right now. Not when they obviously needed some god to come and save them, and she was going out of her way to enrage them all. Perhaps she did have some magical talisman. He could certainly find no good reason to love this horrid woman at this moment.

“I tried to talk to my god once. Irrunega… He didn’t talk back. Nothing in my life changed, either, so he obviously didn’t listen. I tried talking to a dead relative—even an enemy. Finally I searched for my spirit guide. You know what happened? A big nothing. So go ahead pray your stupid head off, because it won’t do you one damn bit of good.”

“It couldn’t hurt. Do you have any better ideas?”

“Well, we could—” She didn’t really have any better ideas at the moment, so she looked around as much as she could. They were in a small, dank, wide space in the tunnel, with no doors on either side that she could make out. “All right—our legs aren’t tied. If we work our legs up, maybe we could stand and try to get away.”

Their first attempt only managed to land all of Kadasah’s weight on Kaytin. He let out a groan and started praying again.

“No, no, now come on, we can do this. I’m taller than you, and we’re tied at our backs, so we just have to remember that. I’ll bend at the knees this time,” she said.

The second time they succeeded in getting on their feet.

“Now what?” Kaytin asked.

It was a good question. It was black as pitch down either passage, and with their hands tied there was really no way to grab hold of the small candle that was lighting the tunnel where they’d been stowed. Obviously the light wasn’t for them, it was there to keep any of their captors from stumbling over the pair in the darkness of the tunnel.

Suddenly—and amazingly, considering she’d been brain dead only a moment before—Kadasah had an idea. She pulled Kaytin over to the small table that held the candle. “We can burn the rope off!” she said forcing their hands over the flame.

“Ouch!” Kaytin screeched. “That’s not the rope; it’s my hand!”

“Sorry.”

After a few more failed attempts the rope finally caught. A few scorched fingers and some ruined clothing later, they were free.

Kaytin grabbed the candle in its holder, and Kadasah smashed the small table, giving one leg to Kaytin and keeping another for herself. With the makeshift weapon in her hand she didn’t feel quite as naked.

“Which way?” Kaytin asked.

“I don’t know! How would I? It’s not like I’ve been here before.” She peered down both halls looking for any sign of light and found none. “But we’ve got to start moving. After all, they’re going to come after us sooner or later and we can’t stay here. In fact, I’m wondering why they haven’t come after us already. You take a guess,” she said indicating the two different passages.

“No, no. You only tell me to guess so that you can blame me when we wind up hopelessly lost. So you guess, and then I can blame you. Which seems fair since this is all your fault anyway.”

“How do you figure?”

“Because all I wanted to do was make love. A painless, enjoyable pleasure, but no—you just had to go kill something.”

Kadasah ignored him and chose. “This way.”

They started walking. And walking. The longer they went without running into anyone the more worried she became. This wasn’t right. Their captors should have come to get them and torture them to death way before this. They should have at the very least noticed they were missing by now, and how hard was it to find people in a tunnel? You could run down one way or the other, but that was about it. So far they hadn’t come to anything jutting off from the main tunnel, although she was fairly sure such exits and entrances existed.

She was an excellent swordswoman—without a sword. She was experienced with an axe—though the “three men with one blow” was mostly a lie—but she had no axe, either. She was most probably the best horsewoman in all of Sanctuary, if not the world. But she was in a tunnel, and her horse was the gods only knew where above her.

She had a candle and a charisma talisman and a couple of table legs, and she was lost underground with possibly hundreds of Bloody Hand Dyareelans and of course Kay tin, who just kept praying to some gods even though he insisted he was S’danzo, and she constantly pointed out how useless it was.